TORONTO: Hudson has been named Canada’s Fair Trade Town of the Year, only the 21st community in Canada to receive the designation, the seventh in Quebec.
The town received the national recognition at an awards ceremony organized by the Canadian Fair Trade Network in Toronto earlier this month. Hudson shared the top award with Brandon, Manitoba.
Other Quebec towns and cities that have been recognized for their commitment to fair trade are Neuville, Hochelaga-Maisonneuve, Ste-Anne-de-Bellevue, Trois-Rivières, Sherbrooke and Wakefield/La Pêche.
“It only happened because the whole town was behind it,” said Robert McKinnon, the chairman of a six-member ad hoc citizen group that got the ball rolling by reaching out to local businesses, churches, schools and community groups.
“The whole community has worked for the past year,” he said. “Everyone should be proud.”
The majority of the Canadian cities that have been awarded the fair-trade designation, including Toronto two years ago, are considerably larger than Hudson, he said. “We are a town of only 5,000.”
However, he said, small towns can make a big difference if everyone gets behind equitable commerce –paying a fair price to artisans, tradesmen and other producers in the developing world so as to help improve their economic circumstances.
In Hudson, fair-trade coffee and tea is now sold at the local IGA, while fair-trade wine from Argentina and South Africa is available at the local SAQ.
Que de bonnes choses, a Hudson health food store, sells fair-trade certified sugar, chocolate and coffee –and soon avocados from farmers in Mexico. At Pure Art, another shop, you can find fair-trade textiles, crafts and other wares made by artisans in Tanzania, Afghanistan, Nepal and India.
Fair-trade coffee is served at at local meeting place, Artisan Café and also at Hudson city hall, where the town council passed in April a resolution endorsing the town’s pursuit of the fair-trade designation.
“I have been passionate about fair trade all my life,” said McKinnon.
Over the past eight years, McKinnon said, he has travelled nine times to a small village in the Amazon in Peru with his wife Brigitte McKinnon and their family to help the Shipibo Indians get their crafts to fair-trade markets.
He said he and his wife got the idea after sponsoring two young Shipibo girls to attend school.
The initiative has grown and, last year, includes more than 20 Hudson-area residents, who accompanied McKinnon and helped build new wood homes with corrugated steel roofs for the tribe.
“Fair trade can make such a difference in their lives, ” said McKinnon.
A town-wide celebration is set for Nov. 25 at the Hudson Village Theatre. As part of the event, the Hudson Film Society will screen The True Cost, a feature-length documentary on fair trade. Fair-trade coffee and wine will be served.
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